Tongues of Conscience Part 10

"Yes. It bears an exact resemblance to Doctor Braybrooke's writing."

"Oh!" said Uniacke, laying the letter aside rather hastily.

They sat down on either side of the table.

"You don't read your letter," Sir Graham said, after two or three minutes had pa.s.sed.

"After breakfast. I don't suppose it is anything important," said the clergyman hastily.

Sir Graham said nothing more, but drank his coffee and soon afterwards went off to his work. Then Uniacke opened the letter.

"CAVENDISH SQUARE, _London, Dec.--_

"DEAR SIR:

"I read your letter about my former patient, Sir Graham Hamilton, with great interest. When he consulted me I was fully aware that he was concealing from me some mental trouble, which reacted upon his bodily condition and tended to r.e.t.a.r.d his complete recovery of health. However, a doctor cannot force the confidence of a patient even in that patient's own interest, and I was, therefore, compelled to work in the dark, and to work without satisfaction to myself and lasting benefit to Sir Graham. You now let in a strange light upon the case, and I have little doubt what course would be the best to pursue in regard to the future. Sir Graham's nervous system has broken down so completely that, as often happens in nervous cases, his very nature seems to have changed. The energy, the remarkable self-confidence, the hopefulness and power of looking forward, and of working for the future, which have placed him where he is--these have vanished. He is possessed by a fixed idea, and imagines that it is this fixed idea which has preyed upon him and broken him down.

But my knowledge of nerve-complaints teaches me that the fixed idea follows on the weakening of the nervous system, and seldom or never precedes it. I find it is an effect and not a cause. But it is a fact that the fixed idea which possesses a man under such circ.u.mstances is often connected, and closely, with the actual cause of his illness. Sir Graham Hamilton is suffering from long and habitual overwork in connection with the sea; overwork of the imagination, of the perceptive faculty, and in the mere mechanical labour of putting on canvas what he imagines and what he perceives.

In consequence of this overstrain and subsequent breakdown, he has become possessed by a fixed sea-idea, and traces all his wretchedness to this episode of the boy and the picture. You will say I did not succeed in curing him because I did not discover what this fixed idea was. How can that be, if the idea comes from the illness and not the illness from the idea. In reply I must inform you that a tragic idea, once it is fixed in the mind of a man, can, and often does, become in itself at last a more remote, but effective, cause of the prolonged continuance of the ill-health already started by some other agent. It keeps the wound, which it has not made, open. It is most important, therefore, that it should, if possible, be banished, in the case of Sir Graham as in other cases. Your amiable deception has quite possibly averted a tragedy.

_Continue in it, I counsel you._ The knowledge that his fears are well founded, that the boy--for whose fate he morbidly considers himself entirely responsible--has in very truth been lost at sea, and lies buried in the ground beneath his feet, might, in his present condition of invalidism, be attended by most evil results.

Some day it is quite possible that he may be able to learn all the facts with equanimity. But this can only be later when long rest and change have accomplished their beneficent work. It cannot certainly be now. Endeavour, therefore, to dissuade him from any sort of creative labour. Endeavour to persuade him to leave the island.

Above all things, do not let him know the truth. It is a sad thing that a strong man of genius should be brought so low that he has to be treated with precautions almost suitable to a child. But to a doctor there are many more children in the world than a statistician might be able to number. I wish I could take a holiday and come to your a.s.sistance. Unfortunately, my duties tie me closely to town at the present. And, in any case, my presence might merely irritate and alarm our friend.

"Believe me, Faithfully yours, JOHN BRAYBROOKE."

Uniacke read this letter, and laid it down with a strange mingled feeling of relief and apprehension. The relief was a salve that touched his wounded conscience gently. If he had sinned, at least this physician's letter told him that by his sin he had accomplished something beneficent. And for the moment self-condemnation ceased to scourge him. The apprehension that quickly beset him rose from the knowledge that Sir Graham was in danger so long as he was in the Island.

But how could he be persuaded to leave it? That was the problem.

Uniacke's reverie over the letter was interrupted by the appearance of the painter. As he came into the room, the clergyman rather awkwardly thrust the doctor's letter into his pocket and turned to his guest.

"In already, Sir Graham?" he said, with a strained attempt at ease of manner. "Ah! work tires you. Indeed you should take a long holiday."

He spoke, thinking of the doctor's words.

"I have not started work," the painter said. "I've--I've been looking at that grave by the church wall--the boy's grave."

"Oh!" said Uniacke, with sudden coldness.

"Do you know, Uniacke, it seems--it seems to me that the gravestone has been defaced."

"Defaced! Why, what could make such an idea come to you?" exclaimed the clergyman. "Defaced! But--"

"There is a gap in the inscription after the word 'Jack,'" the painter said slowly, fixing a piercing and morose glance on his companion. "And it seems to me that some blunt instrument has been at work there."

"Oh, there was always a gap there," said Uniacke hastily, touching the letter that lay in his pocket, and feeling, strangely, as if the contact fortified that staggering pilgrim on the path of lies--his conscience.

"There was always a gap. It was a whim of the Skipper's--a mad whim."

"But I understood he was sane when his shipmate was buried? You said so."

"Sane? Yes, in comparison with what he is now. But one could not argue with him. He was distraught with grief."

Sir Graham looked at Uniacke with the heavy suspicion of a sick man, but he said nothing more on the subject. He turned as if to go out. Uniacke stopped him.

"You are going to paint?"

"Yes."

Again Uniacke thought of the doctor's advice.

"Sir Graham," he said, speaking with obvious hesitation, "I--I would not work."

"Why?"

"You are not fit to bear any fatigue at present. Creation will inevitably r.e.t.a.r.d your recovery."

"I am not ill in body, and work is the only panacea for a burdened mind.

If it cannot bring me happiness, at least--"

"Happiness!" Uniacke interrupted. "And what may not bring that! Why, Sir Graham, even death--should that be regarded as a curse? May not death bring the greatest happiness of all?"

The painter's forehead contracted, but the clergyman continued with gathering eagerness and fervour:

"Often when I pray beside a little dead child, or--or a young lad, and hear the mother weeping, I feel more keenly than at any other time the fact that blessings descend upon the earth. The child is taken in innocence. The lad is bereft of the power to sin. And their souls are surely at peace."

"At peace," said the painter heavily. "Yes, that is something. But the mother--the mother weeps, you say."

"Human love, the most beautiful thing in the world must still be earth-bound, must still be selfish."

"But--"

"Sir Graham, I'll confess to you even this, that on Sunday evening, when, after the service, we sang that hymn, 'Lead, Kindly Light,' I thought would it not be a very beautiful thing if the body mouldering beneath that stone in the churchyard yonder were indeed the body of--of your wonder-child."

"Uniacke!"

"Yes, yes. Don't you remember how he looked up from his sordid misery to the rainbow?"

"How can I ever forget it?"

"Does that teach you nothing?"

There was a silence. Then the painter said:

"Death may be beautiful, but only after life has been beautiful. For it is beautiful to live as Jack would have lived."

"Is living--somewhere," interposed Uniacke quickly.

"Perhaps. I can't tell. But I hear the mother weeping. I hear the mother weeping."

That night Uniacke lay long awake. He heard the sea faintly. Was it not weeping too? It seemed to him in that dark hour as if one power alone was common to all people and to all things--the power to mourn.